Welcome to Travel Again presents the weekly travel Roundup, covering the headwinds and tailwinds impacting the business of travel. Please welcome our hosts, Mike McCormick and Ed Silver.
Hello Mike, good to see you. Hey, how you doing today? I am doing awesome, Mike. Welcome again to season 3, episode five. You might notice I have a slightly different view today; I am podcasting from the beautiful state of Colorado up in the foothills outside Denver, Mike. Very nice. And for me, I’m in the usual spot, but I’m dressed for opening day of Major League Baseball. Put me in, coach; I’m ready. I’m ready to play. We have the Phillies opener here in DC where I am, and that’s exciting too. They’re coming to town to kick off another year, so we’ll see where that all goes, but I’m excited for another season.
Go Birds—I mean, go Phils! Sorry about that, Mike. We are cooking this season, and today we will, as always, review the news. There continues to be some ups and downs in travel: Paris, Canada travel slowdown, travel bans, inbound travel slowing, consumer confidence lowering, you name it. It may be having an impact on travel. Today we can ask our guest how they are navigating it all. Our guest is a major player in the travel industry. We don’t often get a deep dive into the marketing side of airlines, so today that is exactly what we will do.
Let’s dive into the news because, like you said, there is a lot of it. It’s interesting; a lot of factors shape travel, probably the most resilient industry in the world, but at the same time, it is always a lot of interesting headwinds and tailwinds.
All right Mike, let’s bust right into it. Article one today is from our friends at Skift: “Recession Watch for Travel: These Hotel Insiders Don’t See It Yet.” The travel industry is on recession watch, but so far at least, hotel operators aren’t seeing a big pullback according to the nearly dozen sources Skift has been tracking. There are signs of softening, however, and we’ll be watching closely for any shifts in the coming weeks. Mike, give us some context here. What’s going on? Recession, no recession? Slowdown, no slowdown? What do you see?
I think that sums it up in a lot of ways. Travel is resilient. There’s still heavy demand in different pockets in the market, but what shapes that demand changes. Today, looking forward in 2025, you can always try to draw off the past to some degree, but the past is not always a good predictor of the future. We have interesting dynamics. The major airlines, led by Delta, basically reduced their forecast for this year and said things are softening and needed to give guidance in that respect. As we know, the airline industry drives the travel industry; it’s the beginning of it. Whatever happens there is a good reflection of what we’re seeing largely across the industry.
However, not necessarily in every segment of the industry; some are more positive, some more negative. I think for hotels, as Marriott’s CEO said, they’re cautiously optimistic because they’re still seeing relatively good ADR and demand. They’re not seeing that same softening yet, but they’re also cautious that maybe things are changing. Given some of the geopolitical things happening, people are staying more domestic. We do hear things about travel into the US being down significantly and starting to have impact. There’s a lot of factors at play here.
We’ll talk about one of the other segments here that’s booming. It’s really interesting to see how that happens. People still find a way to travel to meet, both for leisure and for business travel. Whether that means for business travel they’re doing it more at conferences and events and meetings than they are in regular individual business travel or transient travel. Leisure again—people still want a vacation; they still want to have leisure time. Maybe the way they do it might change. Hotel seems to be holding up for now, and good for the industry if it does.
Article two, because you hinted at it, is from Travel Weekly: “US Economic Worries Don’t Seem to be Slowing Down Carnival Corporation.” While Carnival Corp is not immune from macroeconomic and geopolitical volatility, CEO Josh Weinstein said business remains strong at the world’s largest cruise company. So, not impacting cruise yet, Mike?
On the leisure side, cruise is booming. You can see that most lines every day seem to be announcing yet another commitment to adding more capacity, adding ships. The major cruise lines, some of them are starting to add river cruises. They’re just seeing nothing but positive demand coming. In previous times, for example, post-COVID, cruise was the last to recover. Now it’s leading in terms of resiliency and the business is just going gangbusters. Again, the ebbs and flows change constantly. This is another sector that seems to be doing well and just seems to be almost immune right now to any of the geopolitical noise and headwinds. It seems to be going as good or better than ever.
Shifting gears slightly Mike, although maybe related—United Airlines. It’s all related. “United Airlines Raises Credit Card and Lounge Fees: Here’s What We Need to Know,” from our friends at Skift. United Airlines announced Monday that it is raising fees for its credit card and lounge fee in a bid that the carrier says will make the cards more valuable to customers. The changes, made alongside its banking partner JPMorgan Chase, include more benefits such as rideshare credits complementing Instacart membership. The new fees go into effect Monday for new signups; benefits will still be active to existing customers. This generated a lot of noise in the online travel and point world community, Mike.
We’ve seen it very publicly in terms of Southwest’s decision after all this time to start charging for bags. Airlines are businesses and there’s always pressure to beat last quarter or last year’s earnings, to keep increasing in terms of revenues and profitability. At some point, the fees that are related to a lot of these services are going to continue to go up. That’s just a fact of inflation and normal practices. It’s revenue management and just another part of the business where they’re constantly looking for ways to do that. Also, as we’ll get into this with our interview today, ways that they in turn make their different loyalty offerings more valuable. If you’re a loyal customer and you’re not paying those fees, that’s a tangible benefit. It doesn’t surprise me that some of that happens. Relatively seemingly small increases and changes in price get a lot of attention. Travel touches everyone. If in another industry somebody raised their prices, you probably wouldn’t even hear about it until you went to pay. In travel, everything gets attention.
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Our guest today is Alicia Tillman. Alicia Tillman, an executive leader with more than two decades of experience in Global Marketing, sales, and strategy, is Delta’s Chief Marketing Officer and a member of the Delta leadership committee. Tillman leads Delta’s brand strategy, overseeing the airline’s world-class Global Marketing, creative services, and community engagement teams, bringing its story to life and deepening its relationship with customers and the world as a trusted consumer brand. Tillman’s marketing credentials include leadership experience as the global CMO at SAP and an 11-year tenure at American Express. Forbes has named her one of the most influential CMOs in the world. Please join me in welcoming Alicia Tillman to the stage.
Alicia, nice to have you. Hey, thank you for having me today; it’s such an honor. It’s an honor to have you. Alicia, disclosure: you and I started off early in our careers in the same company back in the day—Rosenbluth International. You’ve had an incredible journey in terms of the companies you’ve been involved in. How have all those experiences shaped you? How do you bring all that to your job at Delta today?
Truth be told, it was interesting when I started my role at Rosenbluth International in Philadelphia. Real quick story on Rosenbluth: I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, so I was equal distance between Philadelphia and New York. The sports—you probably want to know where my allegiance is from a sports perspective. I heard a “Go Birds,” so I will say I’m a die-hard Eagles fan. Ed, I will make you happy. But Mike, I am going to make you very disappointed when I reveal my baseball team. For whatever reason, it’s so crazy, you always follow your parents in a lot of ways when it comes to sports allegiance. My dad loved the Eagles and Sixers, but he was a Mets fan. Oh yes, it’s so wild! And then when I had kids, we were living around New York City, so my son naturally became a Yankees fan. Now I’m in Atlanta, so I love the Braves. It’s like we’re all over the place as a family now.
The only thing you could have said worse, really a lot worse, is if you told me you were a Cowboys fan. I would have been like, “Okay, end the podcast right there.” Come on, I have a little more tolerance for baseball. In my household, my son is a die-hard New York fan, so he’s a Giants fan. My other son grew up in Northern Virginia, so he’s Commanders. We’ve got practically the whole NFC East covered in our household except for the Cowboys, because it’s just simply not allowed. It’s wrong. No, wrong. That would be bad parenting.
I wanted to work in Philly first; it felt like a city that was less intimidating than New York. I didn’t know where to start, so I picked up Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For in America” and I scanned down the list. The very first Philadelphia-based company was Rosenbluth International and it sat at number 34 on the list. I remember it to this day. A story you probably don’t know: at the time, I went to Rosenbluth’s website and the head of marketing role was available. So here I was, no experience, fresh out of school, and I put in my resume to be the head of marketing for Rosenbluth International. I, of course, did not get that job with zero experience, but I did get accepted into our “floating manager” program. It’s where you got invited into this six-month program of which you rotated through every single department in the company. I went through that and I will tell you, not having any idea what was to become of my career, I said, “This is the best job I will ever have.” I stand here today and I still say the same.
It’s for two reasons. Number one: what kid out of school has the ability to literally sit in every single department in a company to really just understand why is a corporation a corporation? Why do we need all of these departments and how do they work together? To be able to see that, it just helped me get a real appreciation for how you work together across the various departments that exist in a business. It was the best company for me to start at because at the heart, Mike, which is the Rosenbluth secret sauce, is this tremendous care and empathy and respect for people. Our employees being truly what sets your brand apart from any other on the planet—is when you invest in your employees first, that’s when they really bring their authentic self to the customer. That shaped me, and it also shaped my ability to work effectively in navigating through a corporation.
I totally have my own version of that story with Rosenbluth. To Rosenbluth’s credit and the whole team there, the amount of mentoring I got… I feel bad for people today in this environment because it’s rare that you would even have those kind of opportunities anymore. I got an education about business and management and leadership in a way that I think is unmatched. That’s why a part of what really shaped all of us in our careers because you see the people throughout the industry and our common bond was that environment. You were ultimately given responsibilities that were way ahead of probably what we would have been able to get in any other company. They took a lot of faith and risk in us, but they also gave us the support. We learned on the job.
You hit on that now in terms of culture. Delta has a long history of being customer-first and having an internal culture. I’ve dealt with Delta as a customer and a client business-wise. You just always get a very positive feel walking the hallways and dealing with people. To be able to do that and then also be able to turn that into the level of business success Delta has had is not easy. How do you effectively translate that from a marketing perspective? How do you project that? What do you do to translate that into your storytelling?
It’s sort of my career has come full circle in many ways because I started my career at Rosenbluth’s vision and leadership on how important it is to take care of your employees, whereas Ed Bastian 100% shares the same philosophy. It’s a wonder why I am here, because you often are drawn to what’s at your core and what’s really aligned with your values. Our people are truly unrivaled. That’s just not in our industry; I’ve had the great privilege of working in a few industries where I’ve seen it firsthand. It’s unrivaled, frankly, across industries. The investments we make in learning and development and reward and recognition, all the things that really help feed our souls, which then ultimately becomes how we operate day-to-day in delivering the goodness of our brands.
We always say, as most CEOs typically do, our people are our most valuable asset. There’s an expectation that companies put on their people when it comes to delivering the service they expect, but oftentimes companies aren’t as accountable as they need to be in the investment companies need to make to be able to enable that. Delta does that and does it so well. In a lot of ways, Mike, my job is a bit easy because I get to just tell the great story of the authentic way in which our people operate. Our customers can really showcase that and say, “Yeah, you know it’s right.” The interactions that I have with Delta people, be it from the flight attendants to the reservationists to the pilots, it feels like it’s coming from the inside with every service experience that you have.
We spend a lot of time. We have 100,000 employees. We sit here in our centennial year, the first domestic carrier to turn 100 years old. It’s so interesting—when someone turns a 100 years old, usually they’re not at the top of their game anymore. But Delta is number one financially, number one operationally, number one from a premium perspective. The consistency in the accolades that the company receives… I woke up yesterday morning and Ed is gracing the cover of Fortune magazine, and the story is all about one of resilience. If you think back through these hundred years of Delta, we know of all of the challenges from SARS to September the 11th to a global pandemic. But then you think of the individual challenges to Delta on bankruptcy and the merger with Northwest and all the things in between. Yet here is a company who has overcome it all. I will say time and time again it is because of the investment we make in the people and how our people rise up every single time to lead and to really put all of their strength behind the operation and to really help fuel that loyalty that we’re just so proud of that we have with our customer base.
How do you deal with—I imagine you have a significant amount of resource dealing with—all the social media in all its forms? You have a lot of influencers, there’s always tons of people poking at individual experiences. How do you deal with that as a brand? The daily task alone of monitoring all of it is not insignificant. How do you deal with the naysayers out there in the world?
I will say we deal with it as transparently as we can and should be. I’ll talk about it in terms of how we manage it online in this digital universe, but I’ll also talk about it in the context of how our pilots and our flight attendants manage through it as well. We hear time and time again—if we are in the middle of an irregular operation where there’s a delay or a cancellation—we hear time and time again from a service recovery perspective that our customers value more transparent and open communication than any form of compensation that we give to them as a result of a service disruption. It makes such a huge difference.
We all know, even living through the pandemic, people just wanted to hear from people even if they simply didn’t have any updates to share. It’s that human connection to know that we’re in it, we’re dealing with it, here’s what I know now, and I’m going to be back to you in a little bit just to give you another update even if there isn’t really something of substance to share. One of the things that we’re doing—and if you’ve flown on Delta recently, hopefully you’re recognizing this—we’re trying to make our pilots more visible with the passengers. Pilots coming to the front of the cabin so everyone can see them, and they’re talking with them about their journey, what to expect, and what we’re going to do from a service perspective if there’s going to be some disruptions. We find when our passengers can see the pilots, in addition to hearing from the pilots, we see our overall satisfaction with that one flight experience go up significantly as a result of it.
That’s just in itself related to the operation. To your question on social: sure, people take to social with everything—happy, sad, angry, you name it. Social has become this playground for all of it. My team is not as big as maybe one would expect with a consumer brand as large as ours, but what we do is we engage. If someone is unhappy, immediately we engage with them and we help them, whether it’s communication or what can we do to make this better for you. We are constantly, and obviously there’s often great volume, but the negative volume is definitely not at the volume of the positivity that we see our customers out there talking about related to Delta. We engage with them as well. We like our happy customers, but we also want to take care of our customers. Just being on it; we are always on as a team. It’s a 24/7 operation and if somebody’s struggling or they need help, we are just committed to being on. It’s hard; it’s not easy. We make it happen. We’re doing the juggle, it’s real, but we do our best to just engage as much as we can everywhere when someone has something going on online, especially when they’re struggling with something.
Part of your purview and Delta’s is the value of your loyalty program. Comparisons have been made about how, in effect, the loyalty program is more valuable than the airline itself. I take that in the context of: you got to have an actual genuine brand operation before you get to the loyalty element. Where’s that going? Part of your purview is finding ways to extend your brand. I want to do a shout-out for your Sphere program, because I thought it was great. You went out and made a commitment to doing something different to try to project the brand in a different way. I thought it was really innovative, tell your story in a unique way. What an incredible venue to do it in. Where do you think loyalty is going? What role do you see that playing?
We all know it was really the airline industry that architected the very first notion of a loyalty program. You think back to the early 1980s with the architecture of frequent flyer programs, which then every industry and category on the planet have now since of course created their version of what the airline industry had created. But it’s evolving, and it’s evolving significantly, especially when we look at the evolution behaviorally of the different age demographics that are coming in.
Loyalty is certainly the most precious asset that we have and it comes in many forms. Number one: we absolutely want to be the world’s most loved loyalty program. If that is the aspiration, then we need to make sure that there are many facets to this program. Of course, your traditional frequent flyer program, which academically is a spend-and-get model of which the redemption is primarily with assets that exist along the travel ribbon. Very simply, it’s like you spend this, you get this in terms of upgrades or future travel certificates. That evolved a bit over time and so there were partnerships that were from a travel ribbon standpoint across car and hotel to now where we are today: how do we expand the ecosystem of what we are rewarding our travelers with based on their purchasing with us?
We live in a world today, and we see this emerging with a lot of our younger demographics, where if there’s a loyalty to us and there’s an incredibly strong loyalty to Delta, our travelers are saying, “Well there are other brands that also exist in my life and how does Delta open up access to those brands through your channel for me as well?” One such example is our partnership with Starbucks. One could say that’s not really part of your traditional air, car, and hotel travel ribbon, but many would argue everybody needs their coffee to be able to make that travel experience possible. Our Starbucks partnership has performed beautifully for us, especially amongst our Gen Z population who are representative of where our future travel growth is going to come from. We’ve also expanded by way of partnership into different categories as well: entertainment (our partnership with Paramount+), mobility (our partnership with T-Mobile). We’re looking at retail and health and wellness because this is all part of our travelers’ lifestyle. When we think about where we are transporting them to, it’s many destinations and places in the world where these brands are very much a part of their life.
We can continue to invest in our category, but the opportunity for us is real category transcension. In order to achieve that, how do we start to become much more of an active part of our customers’ lifestyle by making our loyalty program provide benefits that sort of bridge their spend with us into other brands that they love when they’re on their travel journey with us? That is just so important. We announced the exclusive YouTube partnership at CES in January of this year; we’ll be the only airline to carry exclusive YouTube content on board, which we’ll be offering here in a couple of months. Uber will be our exclusive rideshare partner; there’ll be an Uber Eats component that will exist within that. Even onboard partnerships—we just introduced our relationship with Shake Shack on board and oh my goodness has that been taking off like wildfire in terms of meal pre-select. The number of people on board who are on the majority selecting Shake Shack as their in-flight meal… it’s been beyond the highest performing option that we’ve offered in history because it’s a cool brand, it’s different, it’s unique, and that’s a lot of what consumers want today and what helps to deepen their loyalty with us as their brand.
It’s interesting, and at the same time, ensuring authenticity that you want. It’s a balance because you still want to make sure those relationships really truly add something unique and add value. There’s a risk you can get so far out that you start to lose your sense of self too in terms of what your brand is about. Shake Shack was a curveball that I thought was a great twist. I’m always amazed at the operational part of those things, though. Pulling that off—what it takes to make that deliver on the value—the behind the scenes is no small feat.
It was very important to us, and same for Shake Shack. If this is not the same quality that you would get in one of their locations, then it’s just not going to be feasible for us to be successful with this on board. The good news is we worked hard, we tested hard, and it’s just been exceptional for us on board. We’re going to continue to have really fun brand collaborations like that. But to your point Mike, it’s really important that these are real true category adjacencies, ones that make sense and fit versus something that feels just so disconnected that even the best person can’t message why this is sitting hand in hand. There’s many ways that you can message why these are coming together, whether it be a brand that you experience on your travel journey to a brand that really fits with us in terms of sharing values. There’s lots of different ways to think about how to bring an ecosystem of brands together that really feel like not only are we part of the same world, but we believe in the same things and we help enable people’s lifestyles and their journeys in very similar ways but perhaps just executed a bit differently. We’re really thoughtful about those brands because we want everything to feel connected. A lot of it is driven by precisely what we’re hearing from our customers—we know that they’re fans of this brand and it’s how do we bring them closer so that they’re able to access that through Delta.
I’m gonna shift to our wrap-up question. This is our season 3 wrap-up: we’re all faced with real and perceived chaos in our personal and professional lives. How do you cope with chaos? You’re in a job that’s very high profile and never know what each day is gonna bring. How do you cope with your chaos personally?
It’s recognizing what always keeps you center. I always say I’m a mom and a wife first. I happen to have a really awesome career. I say this to my kids all the time and I do actually think this is one moment where they listen to me: I do think I’m a better mom because of the career I have, and I think I’m a better professional because I’m a mom. There’s often times each demands different qualities. At the same time, if those qualities can coexist—for example, being very process-oriented and having a clear vision and being relentless in my pursuit of excellence to be able to run a household with the same mentality—it puts my kids on a path to believe in the power of hard work and believe in things like responsibility and accountability and knowing who you are and going for it.
That’s how that translates on that side. On the other side, you got to have a lot of patience and understanding and empathy as a parent. Having that quality brought into my career allows me to be a real people-first leader, being in touch with and responsive to people’s needs and their wants and their desires and how I work to enable them. That’s what is just the beautiful thing that I take to heart and it’s sort of what keeps me center. To your question—what helps me cope with the chaos? I live off of the juggle because it’s rewarding to see how each can benefit from each other. That’s a fun position to be able to be in. It allows me to just appreciate and cope with the chaos every single day.
Parenting certainly keeps you grounded. If there’s one thing that keeps you grounded, it’s your children. The world has certainly changed from a parenting perspective. I felt like when I grew up, my parents were in control. I’m waiting for the day when I am in control of my household because my kids are running our household.
You have a long wait!
It’s been a pleasure. Thank you for coming on and sharing your insight. Terrific insight about Delta and your role. All the best. It’s been an absolute privilege. I have loved spending the time with you and thank you again for having me.
Alicia Tillman is the Chief Marketing officer of Delta Air Lines. Thank you, Alicia, for your time. Cheers.
Wow, a great interview Mike. Just fascinating to see the perspective inside the marketing of such a massive infrastructure. I really enjoyed that. What were some of your key takeaways?
It’s interesting finding that balance between wanting to do so much in terms of the program and the partnerships and the importance of keeping that genuine and grounded. There are so many brands out there where it’s not even about the age of the brand; it’s like: do you feel a genuine connection to the brand? Do you really feel like the people working there are truly trying to do the right thing and to live out that brand and that mission? That’s not easy to do, especially at the scale they have to do it. It’s impressive. It’s like an amazing block of clay to work with from a marketing perspective, but also it’s hard because you’re always being tested. They are the leader of the airline industry, so that comes with an incredible amount of responsibility. Everybody’s watching you all the time. It’s fascinating to hear from her perspective how she manages through that. As always, a million business books have been written but it’s all top-down. If the CEO and the leadership haven’t bought in and they’re not doing it every day, then it doesn’t happen.
Clearly they’re willing to take interesting and unique twists with their brand, from the Sphere to Shake Shack. They’re slight curveballs but then you stop and you think and you’re like, “That really is kind of core to who Delta is and really could benefit me as a traveler.” Those are two great examples of her influence on things so far.
Really good insight for sure. All right Mike, that is our show today. If you have a challenge in your business or want to better understand the chaotic world of travel, reach out to us at Travel Again to see how we can help bring clarity to your business now backed by Phocuswright data and research. We will see you back again during our next show in a few weeks. Mike, always great to see you. Great to see you, Ed.